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Doctors convicted of violent and sexual crimes abroad — including attempted murder and child rape — still have active medical licenses in Finland due to a legal loophole, according to reporting by OCCRP’s media partner Yle.
Under Finnish law, authorities only consider imprisonment for a crime as relevant to a doctor’s practice if it was committed “in connection with the practice of their profession.”
Over 20 doctors banned or sanctioned in other countries are allowed to practice in Finland, Yle discovered. They include:
Kwok Yun Lee: Lost his right to practice in Norway after being found incompetent. Also lost license in the Netherlands. Later sentenced to 11 years in prison for attempted murder and assault in Norway. Still licensed in Finland, where he has worked in the past, and in Estonia.
Martin Ahlström: Sentenced to three years in prison for child rape in Sweden. Retains his Finnish medical license.
Yusef Issa: In prison in Sweden for tax and accounting fraud. Previously convicted for forging COVID certificates during the COVID-19 pandemic. No longer licensed in Sweden, but retains his license in Finland. Has changed his name five times since his first sentence.
Reporters found 12 of the doctors identified as licensed in Finland despite bans abroad had been convicted of crimes. Nine had been banned for incompetence that threatened patient safety.
The revelations come as part of the Bad Practice investigation, led by OCCRP, The Times in the U.K., and Norway’s VG. Journalists discovered doctors across Europe and beyond who have been banned for major wrongdoing — including causing psychological and physical harm to their patients — but were able to relocate and pick up their careers.
Reporters from Yle investigated the work and moves of a doctor convicted in Sweden for possessing more than 250 images and several videos depicting child sexual abuse and child pornography — and for distributing one image. He has worked in two health care facilities in Finland in recent years.
Michelle Haga told Yle how she had taken her four children to be treated by the doctor for ear infections in 2022 without any idea of his past. “A doctor who has been convicted of such a crime should not work with children or other people,” she said.
The doctor, who was given a short probationary prison sentence in Sweden, lost his license there due to his conviction. His license was also revoked in Norway. It is not known whether he is currently practising in Finland or elsewhere, but he retains his Finnish license. He has changed his name twice in the past five years, reporters found.
Finland’s national health regulator, Valvira, had conducted an investigation into the doctor in 2022 after being informed by Sweden and Norway of their bans. But Valvira concluded there was no reason to remove his license.
Valvira said it could not comment on individual cases, but said that a doctor can only lose their license for crimes committed in Finland and in connection with their profession.
“A crime alone cannot be the basis for this decision… We have to investigate the matter more broadly... There may be some other grounds on which we can intervene in the right to practice a profession,” said Valvira’s Head of Unit Mervi Koivuniemi.
Politicians and regulators in Finland are calling for a change to national legislation so that crimes committed abroad and in a doctor’s private life are considered.
"This should be considered. Whether these crimes committed during leisure time can also be taken into account in some way in the supervision of professionals," Koivuniemi said.
"Specifically, crimes that are serious and threaten life, health, and personal integrity have been proposed, and I believe that this will now be taken into account in the overall reform of the law and in the review of this law," Koivuniemi added.
Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health said it was reviewing the law on the supervision of doctors, but did not want to comment further.
